Does anyone have any good recommendations for tour companies to go on excursions within China. My dad is coming out to Shanghai for 2 weeks to visit us, and I'd like to send him off for a few days/week to go and see some of the sights - Beijing/Xian etc. He'd be a single traveller, and thinking group is more his thing, rather than an expensive/individual/bespoke tour and guide.

Cheers

Pleased to see the spam previous response has been deleted.

From a search online, the following companies seem to have been used before:

- Spring Tour
- China Odyssey
- China Highlights
- Wendy Wu

Does anyone have any experience of these? Particularly interested to know what % of tour are westerners. Don't want a tour where my dad would be the only westerner on it!

If I want to send my dad on, say, a 3 day tour of Beijing, usual stuff, bit worried that he'd have to make his own way to Beijing and navigate to wherever the tour went from - even if they met him at the airport, so anything that starts in Shanghai might be better.

And any responses promoting your own company/1st time posters will obviously be ignored (and hopefully deleted).

Hey all,

So you've consigned papa to the Chinese tourist horror story? Go onnnnn.... take some time off and show him the ropes yourself!

My experiences with those ones mentioned above were: Wendy = spammer; Spring Tour = surprisingly good English service and do everything for you pretty well; China Odyssey = stuffed up a booking and really p!ssed off my Dad to the point that they dropped him off on a motorway in the middle of nowhere (north 5th ring road of Beijing) -- so lost my money right there. YMMV.

What I did with Dad in Beijing was train up there with him (to show him the new trains) and then fly down alone to get back to work. I got that geezer in the London-style cab to drive him around a few places after Odyssey messed everything up; his English was fine.

If you speak Chinese, give Dad a cheap cellphone and be a bit bolder; that way you just need to keep the tour guide on speed dial and check up every now and again.

Hiya - thanks for message and sharing your experience. Hadn't actually thought about doing it myself - my chinese is hai keyi, although still doubt Beijing folk would understand my english accent! On the basis that probably going to be his Shanghai tour guide, and he'll be with us for 2 weeks, bar the trip itself, will probably want a break He will also enjoy a tour and meeting a few other people, assuming the people on it are western!

So far Wendy W appear to be more geared towards international visitors (UK and Australia) who are coming to China as part of an all-inclusive holiday, so aren't really going to offer a 3 day trip to Beijing.

I liked the look of Spring Tour, and especially your comment on English tours (on the particular trip you did, was everyone western?) Their website has a pretty professional English look. My mother-in-law has done a bespoke China Odyssey tour, and didn't have any issues, but note your comments!

Thanks again - very helpful!

<--- re: SpringTour -- yes, all were 'western', but half were overseas Chinese coming back to learn about China through an English-speaking tour. I guess they lost the language ability ... and I suppose that's a pretty good gauge of how good this tour would be for your follks; whether or not overseas Chinese dig it!

Best of luck and watch out for that super-good deal that you might come across because chances are it'll be too good to be true.

Thanks again - very helpful. One last question, if you don't mind, what was the standard of the accomodation like? Food, I guess, is also a bit "local"?!

Hiya - it was one of those cheap convenient business hotels, 7 Days I think. My folks didn't mind. They wanted to eat like locals too - part of the adventure - so all I had to do was find a few wine bars because they could not handle the Great Wall vintage of grape.